A Counter Net War Strategy for India

For almost 48 hours administration seemed to be in a quandary in managing the menace of rumors floating in various cities. Ironically all these Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Pune are the hub of India’s information technology, “power.” The experience of Jammu and Kashmir where such means were used by terrorist groups and agencies supporting them from across the border to trigger violence from 2008 to 2010 in the summer seems to have escaped notice. A more recent exposure outside India of use of mobile phones for mobilization by anti socials in the London riots was either not studied carefully or ignored.  

 

This has happened when the country is most vulnerable to a net war, described by Rand scientists John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt as malign use of networks to target an opponent’s vulnerability in the socio political, economic or information field. The lesson of the recent past should hopefully enable us to put into place a strategy to counter such attempts which are likely to continue. Anti India forces may upgrade their skills in the next attack and use their hubs within the country to prevent being directly implicated, given that they have established support structures in at least six states to target India’s societal fault lines. Some suggestions for the same are offered herein.

 

Firstly, apparent lack of coordination between various agencies to counter cyber attacks  and use of communication networks is evident. A central coordination agency is necessary where inputs from all sources can be coordinated and executive orders issued for containing the threat. The present apparent diffusion between the Ministry of Home, Information Technology and the National Technology Research Organisation (NTRO) would have to be overcome. While the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) should have been an appropriate agency for this purpose the proposal is in a limbo. The Multi Agency Centre should take on this role to facilitate coordination of intelligence and response.

 

Secondly, building capacity of state police for appreciation of the threat and countering the same is necessary. Cyber crimes cells of state police need to be expanded and trained in monitoring the internet as well as hostile communications so that source of trouble is nipped in the bud rather than seeking help of the central government. States will have to into place an agency to coordinate monitoring of mobile communication networks and will have to be legally empowered for this purpose in times of crisis without impinging on privacy. This will also overcome the requirement of NCTC which is unlikely to see the light of the day in the near future.

 

Thirdly, public cooperation in this sphere is important and prompt reporting of any malicious propaganda to the police or a central agency on the mobile network  or the web should be facilitated.

 

Fourthly, at the national level the NTRO will have to expand the capacity to continuously monitor anti India propaganda on the web, television channels and mobile networks on a 24/7 basis through the year. Considerable resources will have to be provided for this purpose given the large volume of media networks to be covered. 

 

Fifthly, legal mechanisms would have to be put into place to ensure that social networking sites posting hostile content are restrained from the same within the right of freedom of speech.  Legal options will have to be worked out in tandem with social media sites as Google +, Facebook and Twitter to be able to counter the harm that anti social elements can cause exploiting the easily available tools of information age. For this again continuous monitoring of media is necessary and it should not be incident based.

 

Sixthly, where social media agencies do not cooperate, warning people access to content on these in other media, publicly exposing the persons propagating the same and posting counter messages on the same media would have to be undertaken.

 

Seventhly, where required offensive cyber strikes will have to be initiated on web sites which are continuing to spawn communal hatred and propaganda. A capability for this purpose will have to be created and if already existing used where required to bring down web sites that are clearly against public interest.

 

Eighthly, national television which has maximum reach should be used by public personalities including political leaders, war heroes, sport personalities and film stars to come out in the open and highlight mendacious activity of anti social elements and appeal for public calm. There was a noticeable absence of such activity with some news editors taking upon themselves this task which would have been better conveyed if more prominent personalities with effective public connectivity had appeared a number of times on national television.  For instance appeals by popular film stars many of whom were trying to sponsor their newly released films would have had great effect had they been used appropriately.

 

Ninthly, externalizing the threat is inevitable even though this may lead to some hiccups in India’s trajectory of mending relations with Pakistan. The complicity of elements from that country state and non state in targeting India’s fault lines is well established thus there should be no hesitation in demanding responsible actions to contain anti India attacks in the cyber as in other domains. 

 

The measures outlined above are neither novel nor unknown yet these will take sustained efforts to implement given inertia and friction in the socio political domain. Yet as importance of information and cyber domain grows we will have to be fully prepared with a counter net war blueprint lest we are once again caught napping.  

 

Brig Rahul Bhonsle (Retd) is a Defence Analyst based in New Delhi

Views expressed are personal